Akiva Israel

Shakespeare in Rehab: How Western Societies, Ivy League Schools, and Special Interest Groups Are Waging War on World Culture and How One Child Prodigy is Fighting Back Akiva Israel

Shakespeare in Rehab takes an introspective look at how Western culture is changing traditions within both the education system as well as artistic expression, ultimately resulting in a world where aesthetic awareness is slowly dissipating. At age seven, child prodigy Akiva Israel began nurturing his love of philosophy, and he tells a fascinating story of the history of art, as well as the failures of the United States public education system, to adequately teach future generations about the masterpieces of Western culture. Dividing his observations into several parts, Israel opens by providing historical reconstructions of several major artistic revolutions and retraces the history of ideas concerning the arts and how deep thinkers like Socrates and Plato understood art. In later sections, Israel presents a fundamental problem, prescribes a solution, and includes answers to several questions that center around the subjects of analyzing art and our awareness of its importance in today's world culture. This in-depth exploration of the history of art, both past and present, reexamines the same complex issues that our great thinkers once contemplated. Its contents will surely encourage lively and intellectual discussions about the answer to the question, "Is life still worth living without beauty?"